remove the mayor really and that in a general election not until next year but revelations lie ahead and the video when it's eventually produced in court. the pressure on them battled mayor is bound to increase, daniel with al jazeera toronto. this is "real money." you as always are the most important part of the show, so please join our conversation for the next half hour, use the handle at aj"real money" on twitter. so washington budget battles are heating up again. this week the renewal of a farm

bill that expired on october 1st. what is more a temporary expansion to the food stamp program is get to expire tonight. every five years congress passes a new farm bill that sets limits. last year farmer subsy idyes in the united states totaled $14.9 billion. and the government paid out crop insurance totaling $15.8 billion. it guarantees farmers a price for their crop. critics charge that big argi businesses benefits more than small farmers do, but both sides in washington seem to agree on keeping most of the subsidies in place. earlier today we spoke with agriculture secretary. >> a lot of people don't understand the risks associated with farming.

farmers may spend 500 or more dollars an acre putting in a crop. and they can lose some or all of their operation in an entire year. that's why it is important to have the safety net for farmers. >> now despite being called the farm bill, up to 80% of the money in it goes to food stamps. since the recession the number of americans on food stamps has risen to 48 million. republicans say the program is costly and wasteful, with too many recipients that weren't really needy. the democratically controlled senate passed a bill that would reduce the food stamp program by $4 billion over the next decade. sounds like a lot, right? the house has passed a version that cuts out $40 billion, ten times as much over the next ten years now it's up to both sides

to reconcile the two bills. patricia sabga reports. >> reporter: food stamps are one of the most hotly contested issues in the farm bill and an enduring source of political controversy since they were created. the first food stamp program was originally a way to bridge the gap between struggling city dwellers in need of food and rural farmers with crops. in 1961 president kennedy fully implemented the program, along the way, electronic benefit themselves. the program standings as the country's largest effort to counter hunger. it is officially called snap, and food stamp benefits stand today at record levels. roughly 48 million americans use them at a cost of $78 billion in

2012, an average of $133 per month per recipient. eligibility depends on your income level, you can't buy alcohol, cigarettes or hot food. but it provides an overall boost to the economy. >> for every dollar that is spent through food stamps, you generate an additional $0.75 in the rest of the economy. of all of the things that lawmakers could do to help support the economy in a tough economic time, one like now, nothing is more has a bigger bang for the buck than does food stamps. >> reporter: united states secretary of agriculture said the cuts effect more than just program recipients. >> since farmers receive $0.15 of every dollar that goes through a grocery store it is also about farm income. >> reporter: grocery stores, and even the trucking industry could

be hurt by program cuts. food retailers collected nearly $75 billion in food stamp payments last year. and wal-mart estimates it rakes in around 18% or $14 billion of total food stamp spending. >> putting food on the table is a big business. it's very important to our economy. a lot of jobs are tiedig into that simple thing, getting food orn the table. >> reporter: the end of the stimulus plan's extension means it will drop $10 per person per month. if the house bill becomes law the congressional budget office estimates up to 3.8 million people would lose their benefits in 2014. patricia sabga, al jazeera. wall street firm stern gee says the estimated cut to snap

benefits is just a frac - fraction of the $120 billion hit that reduced paychecks by 2%. but some supermarkets are getting nervous. including a man in bay ridge brooklyn where a quarter of their sales are from food stamps. he joins me now from the store. good to see you. and thank you for being with us. i think it's hard to imagine that near where we are, a quarter of your sales come from people with food stamps have you heard from them if these cuts go in to effect tonight? >> thank you for having me. yeah, people with the food stamp program, they try to budget their -- their spending as much as possible, and a lot of times you get people coming into the store who's food stamps up run out on them, and that $10 can be a couple of boxes of cereal and

weeks. >> and the adjustment might be permanent. whether you are looking at the democratic proposal to cut $4 billion over 10 years, or the republican proposal to cut $40 billion over 10 years, this will effect your business. >> yeah, absolutely. the less revenue in our business, causes the less revenue to go out there to the truck drivers, the wholesalers, the employees, and the less money that gets generated from our business is less money that is available for other -- other people arou around -- the -- businesses as well. not just the industry market, but on the whole sellers end and industry. >> are you making plans in anticipation of this? other words are there going to be workers who get fewer hours? are you going to have to lay anybody off?

oh, it looks like i lost his signal. i could see that sort of happening. we'll see if we can catch up with the manager of the sea town supermarket. when howard buffet decided to become farmer, he did not take the approach you might expect. >> when i got here, i wanted to farm, so i started buying farm ground. and i was looking for the cheapest, you go north of here and it is some of the most expensive in the world. but now i'm buying both. >> keep it here.

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a -- 58-year-old philanthropist, and the son of warren buffet. he is also an unapologetic midwestern farmer who enjoys getting his hands dirty. >> you get out there, you get to go from field to field. i love the task completion of farming. i love the ability to produce something. and every year is different. >> buffet grew up in nebraska and moved to illinois in 1992. he farms about 45 minutes away in pana illinois. >> i started buying farm ground and oiveng was looking for the cheapest farm ground. you go north of here, and it is some of the most expensive farm land in the world.

but now i find myself buying both. >> buffet farms corn and soybean. he is an advocate of no-till conservation practices. a way of growing crops without digging, stirring or overturning the soil. >> you'll see corn stocks where we picked corn, and the soybeans -- we don't touch that until next year. >> he believes it help conservative topsoil that is water. >> we're losing more soil in this country today than in the great dust bowl. >> when we put our chemical on, we put in a little bit of nitrogen. >> he is not afraid to use his influence to tackle controversial issues, including the need for better immigration

policies to help the agricultural industry. according to the labor department, the u.s. had 1.4 million crop workers between 2007 and 2009, 26% of them were migrant workers. >> we have farm thaers are going out of business because they need. >> is for my viewers who say we have upward of 10 million unemployment people in america, can't they be those workers? >> that's is the easiest myth to debunk. you advertise, and you might have three americans show up with 100 other people that show up. >> why is that? >> go out into the watermelon fields or strawberry fields of yuma, arizona. you and i wouldn't last ten minutes. the heat and physical labor is unbelievable. our foundation did a study, and we found that anybody in arizona

can earn as much money from the state and federal government being unemployed as they can working in the field. >> buffet also worries about americans who seem to be disconnected from their foot roots. he uses tower hill. 12 minutes away from his farm as an example. >> those people had no way to get access to what we would call, you know, the basic foods including fruits and vegetables. can they get to a quick shop? that's the easiest thing to get to. we're big production, we're cutting soybeans, cutting corn, picking wheat. you don't have fruits and vegetables unless you have somebody that is going a truck market operation.

usda subsidies ieswas a huge amount. this man grow up on a dairy farm. today they are the last ones standing. they are in danger of collapse. their farm is in foreclosure, having battled soaring feed costs, drought and debt. tim and his wife took out a loan to open a bottling plant. he opened three retail stores and believes the key to saving his business is to open three more. tim has launched an appeal on crowd-funding site. tim thank you for being there with your cows. i love it. you. >> yeah, it's a job every day, day. >> so you got -- a few years

ago, 2005, you looked at this and said wholesale prices for milk were not cutting it for you, so you decided to open a retail operation. then what happened? >> we got backing from your bank, and the bank got a guarantee behind our loan, and we started bottling our own milk on the farm. first we went into grocery stores, and shortly found that that wasn't the way to go, so we opened a retail store here, and that was a huge success. and we opened two other stores. >> and they are doing well? >> very well. we're selling milk, we're selling local fruits and vegetables right on the main streets in our towns, yeah. >> so what is the problem? you are

making money. are you able to pay back your loan? because the bank is ready to foreclose on you. >> we went through two years of drought. the first year we thought we were going to turn the corner, but then we went through two years of drought. your largest expense on a dairy farm is feed. hey isn't available, so i had to buy it. the neighbors had sold all of their hey already. so i had to access it from missouri and wherever i could find it, at about three times normal cost, and we have had two years of $8 corn. so with our feed prices escalating and trying to keep up, we reduced the size of our her, we access waste from a cider mill.

and this year, i did get quite a bit of hay up, but the bank says no more. >> you had somebody to help you out, but you still need to raise another quarter million dollars. is that right? >> that's about right. and we set up a crowd funder. it hasn't done well yet, but it's hard to get it out. and really, i mean, you know, if we could just pull $250,000 into that thing, it wouldn't take that many people and money to make it happen. >> what do they get in return for contributing some money? >> a piece of paper saying that helped me, basically. but that's pretty much it. maybe a jar of soil from the they can go through and read up on it on our website.

-- [ technical difficulties ] >> we also have that information on our own website, tim. i hope the farm continues to be in your family. thank you for tell us your story. all right. trick or treat, how a new tv show has made life a lot more interesting for one american town that decided to change its name more than a decade ago. i'll explain when "real money" >> while you were asleep, news was happening. >> here are the stories we're following. >> find out what happened and what to expect. >> international outrage. >> a day of political posturing. >> every morning from 6 to 10am al jazeera america brings you more us and global news than any other american news channel. >> tell us exactly what is behind this story. >> from more sources around the world. >> the situation has intensified here at the boarder. >> start every morning, every day, 6am to 10 eastern with al jazeera america.

on august 20th, al jazeera america introduced

well it's a big night for fright freaks everywhere as halloween brings out our inner ghost, goblin, ghoul, and even headless horseman. sleepy hollow new york is now enjoying a tourism boom. as stacey tisdale reports, sleepy hollow the show was just the shot in the arm that sleepy hollow the town needed. >> reporter: the year was 1996. general motors closed down his terry town plant. and the village north decided it was time to change its image and hollow. >> the village is trying to recover from that hit. it was huge hit, and i think one

of the reasons to change the name to sleepy hollow was to downtown. >> reporter: the name change was a draw. people flocked to the town to catch a glimpse of the graveyard wheric baud crane traveled. but then fox launched its smash-hit series, sleepy hollow in september. >> probably close to a hundred thousand tourists in september. they show clips -- overhead shots of the actual village of sleepy hallow, and a lot of people are interested in seeing

what the real sleepy hollow is all about. >> reporter: even the greatest of tv shows don't last forever, so what would happen to the town if the show went away? >> it has brought a lot of interest in the village, not just tourests, but maybe entrepreneurs, and developers that will bring the opportunity to make our downtown better than what it is today. >> reporter: fox has renewed the series for the 2014/2015 season. stacey tisdale, al jazeera, new york. >> let's go to sleepy hollow now and check in with the horseman restaurant and pizza, which has seen a 40% boost in revenue since the tv show premiered in september. sleepy hollow is just a short drive from new york city. and when i drive through it i feel like it is a piece of history.

has it always felt like that, or has the name change brought the legend to life? >> the name change has really helped a lot, but just when you drive through the town and it's just got its own -- glow about it. and everybody is like -- everybody stops here, and say where issic -- is icbad's grave? and then right there is the old dutch church and the cemetery. they all come here to see that. >> and washington irvings gave is very nearby. have you -- you have seen this 40% jump. do you see new people or faces? are people telling you they are there because they have seen the tv show? >> good question. just last night i had a couple from missouri. they just happened to cross the

bridge and right there is a sign that says exit 9 sleepy hollow, they were like oh, my gosh, is sleepily hollow a real town? so they got off and dined at our restaurant. and it was the highlight of their trip. >> obviously you are a business so you want to keep this growth in revenue going for a while, are you capitalizing on this new-found romance? >> oh, yes, we are. we are very much. and everybody is asking me if it is shot here. and surprisingly it is not shot here, but they like to believe it is shot here in sleepy hollow, because you do see the horseman restaurant, the high school, 117, and the cemetery, and it looks like it is shot in our town. >> listen, one thing that was interesting is that you haven't done so women -- well in your restaurant the last two halloweens.

last year it was bad weather, and the year before that what was going on? >> last year was hurricane sandy. >> that's right. >> and i hate to say that we suffered when i see what happened to queens and new jersey. i feel to say we suffered when they were devastated down there, and the year before that it was a snow storm. we did have the hayride, one night. and the next night the hay was all covered in snow and nobody was going to come out in that kind of weather. >> i guess you don't have a on the of people in there, because treating. >> believe it or not we have been busy. events are going on in town. the cemetery i'm sure has something going on. tomorrow and saturday, the hollow and the legend are still november. >> laura good to see you. congratulations and i hope

things continue to go well. i'll stop in for pizza one of these days. final thought goes to the stock market. the great depression started with a stock meltdown in october of 1929. panic returned six days later. this year's october's scary moments included the shutdown, but despite that, october was a bumper month for stocks. s&p 4.5% higher for the month. during this five-year bull market run the s&p has enjoyed an average annualized return of 12.6%. good news for the investor, you would imagine that the brain power at a place like harvard could have figured out a way to beat the market, but it has achieved an average return of 1.5%.

♪ this is al jazeera. ♪ welcome to the news hour, i'm in doha with the top stories. it's not over, we meet the rebels who say they will attack mali again if it doesn't stop persecuting people. shells reign down on the u.n. syria envoy says opposition and government must be represented at peace talks. first thailand's lower house part of the amnesty billha